THE disclosure in your newspaper that at least six council employees receive salaries in excess of £100,000 a year may not tell the whole story.

It would be interesting to establish how many receive other benefits, such as subsidised or leased cars, private health insurance and generous, council taxpayer-funded pension contributions.

I am also concerned at your report that councillors, who have the grandiose titles of ‘cabinet members’ – perhaps to to justify the increased allowances that accompany these positions – will now be given individual sweeping powers over financial matters.

Some of these exalted people were in council posts when they allowed decades of gross financial mismanagement to occur on the Wirral.

On their past record, they should not be trusted to run an office tea fund, let alone be allowed to authorise large contracts, write off debts, sell off surplus council land and employ even more consultants.

We have still not had any explanation as to why lavishly paid outside consultants are necessary when council employees earning large sums are in post.

What does that say about their abilities?

One consultant is reported to be paid almost £1,000 a day.

To put that in some perspective, I pay nine months' council tax to fund one day of his/her work.

Sadly, no amount of adverse publicity about ‘fat cats’ or ‘snouts in troughs’ will have any effect on the increasing number of public servants – and I use the term in the loosest sense – throughout the country who are rewarded by salaries and benefits that their employers, the public, can only dream of.

Only government legislation, which is most unlikely, will stop the cats putting on weight or the snouts digging even deeper.

Charles Nunn, Upton